![]() In “New South Wales” he sings about how he’d rather drink his Listerine than “the piss they call tequila” and references “the sand they call cocaine.” Throughout, people are drunk and hurting. Plenty of this centered around the debauched life he’d recently left behind. Rather than languishing in the bad old days or getting glib about his newfound sobriety, Isbell wove through heavy narratives - scars people carry with them, dead ends they run into, the occasional glimmer of an escape. Many of the songs on Southeastern are character songs, but there always seems to be a bit of Isbell in the stories he’s telling. The album is full of both despair and hope, tracing a destructive road that could have ended with Isbell dying a premature death but instead set up the redemption arc: Isbell the revered songwriter, Isbell the happy family man. He stayed clean, and he and Shires got married just a few days after he wrapped recording on the album. Yet at the same time, it portrayed a new Jason Isbell - sober, honing his craft, finding a new love. Southeastern is a dense, often lyrically dark album. He had waited to use that word until an album that found him at a moment of great evolution. But knowing what we know now, it was also like he was finally assuming a mantle. The title could be a simple nod to his part of the States, to the musical traditions of northern Alabama that he grew up learning. It had the ring of a memoir, Isbell coming into a clearer view of himself and, on the other side of tumultuous years of active addiction, making sense of the place that made him. ![]() But of course, the word resounded more broadly. The name Southeastern came from childhood, referencing a tool and die shop that Isbell’s father worked at in Alabama. These were the songs that would become Southeastern, Isbell’s level-up breakthrough. After a stint in rehab, he re-emerged and had nothing to do but work on songs he’s talked about unlocking a different focus and intent, as opposed to the commonly repeated fear and/or myth that the removal of chemical amplification would also equal creative bankruptcy. That led to an intervention, including Isbell’s family, his manager, and then-friend Ryan Adams. When he was still just dating Amanda Shires, there were a few times when Isbell got drunk and told her he needed to quit drinking - she replied that if he said it one more time, she’d hold him to it. When Southeastern arrived, 10 years ago this Sunday, it began yet another life for Isbell - one that kicked off the decade-long ascension we’ve watched since. All through those years, Isbell lived the life of a wild man on the road, drinking himself into oblivion. The Truckers booted him out in 2007, and he embarked on a solo career. Isbell proved himself a prodigious young songwriter along the way, but also a man prone to self-sabotage. ![]() Then there was the range-y twenty-something joining up with the alt-country travelers Drive-By Truckers. There’d been the teenager cutting his teeth around Alabama, the 21-year-old signing a publishing deal with the hallowed Muscle Shoals outpost FAME Studios. ![]() By the time he released Southeastern, Jason Isbell was 34 and had already lived a few lives. ![]()
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